By Jerry Pacheco
Part two of a two-part series:
In my last article, I began a discussion on tips to make a trade show in Mexico successful. This week, I will discuss specific tactics that I have learned over the years that have been successful for my organizations.
Language is a factor that should be considered carefully when putting together a team that will attend to an organization’s booth and work the trade show. Almost every exhibitor at a Mexican trade show will have people that can speak English and Spanish. Most Mexican businesspeople have at least a working knowledge of English. However, you will encounter some businesspeople for whom English is still difficult to understand and uncomfortable. I strongly suggest having a bilingual person at your booth tending to the visitors. A bilingual person who is versed in the technical terms of the industry in which your company or organization operates is even more valuable.
Company brochures and marketing materials must be distributed wisely at trade shows. Your company’s representatives can only lug so many of these materials with them when traveling to Mexico. Nothing is worse than handing out every piece of material in your booth, often to people who don’t have a serious interest in your company, only to find that you have run out when a serious prospect appears.
It is common for Mexican professors and teachers to have their students attend a trade show as part of a school assignment for class discussion. Often a trade show will be dead and then all of a sudden hordes of students will swarm exhibitors’ booths and gather materials. This presents a delicate issue. Like most other businesspeople, I am encouraged by young students interested in learning more about the business world. However, students can quickly deplete an exhibitor’s materials and giveaways.
I have developed a system to allocate and preserve materials at my trade booth. I create black and white copies of basic materials and flyers that I make available to anybody who is collecting booth materials. I place more expensive brochures, giveaways, trinkets and information deeper into the booth, or behind my team members to be handed out to serious prospects. If visitors to the booth ask for giveaways, I tell them that those materials are for qualified prospects, but they are welcome to the free flyers at the front of the booth.
As is the case around the world, consultants, confidence men, and outright swindlers are attracted to trade shows. In Mexico, the term “coyote” is used to describe a hustler looking for a consulting job with a company. Always ask for company information and credentials of individuals wanting to do business with your company. As is the case anywhere, if a person promises you the world, your suspicions should be immediately aroused.
What happens when a qualified prospect’s plant or office is in the same city as the trade show? In this case, a great opportunity could be at hand to vet the prospect and see his operations first-hand. I have qualified some excellent prospects and verified their capabilities by leaving the trade show in the hands of my colleagues and visiting the prospect’s place of business. However, caution is always in order, especially when dealing with strangers. Before you accept an invitation to visit a plant, ask the show organizers if they know anything about the company or the individual who has approached you. For extra safety, travel to the visit in pairs and let the show organizers know what you are doing. Having three or four people working the trade show will allow for this.
Always verify the telephone numbers you collect at the show and be sure that the contact is giving you his/her full number with the country code, area code, and local number. Many Mexican businesspeople assume that you know that you know the area code and they simply write their local number. After returning home, you will have a horrendous time trying to figure out if this person was from Juarez (area code 656), Chihuahua City (area code 614), or some other city.
A common and popular strategy at Mexican trade shows is the use of attractive female models in the trade booth. Referred to as “edecanes,” these models greet visitors to the booth, hand out materials, and wear a company logo or insignia on their dress clothes. This may seem somewhat sexist or chauvinistic in the U.S., but the use of beautiful women to help market products at trade shows is widespread throughout Mexico. Edecanes charge approximately U.S. $15.00 per hour and they may require the company to buy their show clothes.
You will think that you have hit the jackpot in making a contact, finding a distributor, or making a sale several times during the course of a show. Back at the home office, you will call to follow up with the prospect only to find that he/she is not returning calls. Don’t get discouraged. First, the prospect is probably busy following up with many leads/contacts collected at the show. Second, there is still an element of “getting around to an issue when everything is ready” because time is more fluid in Mexico. I have made what I thought were the most promising contacts at Mexican trade shows only to find that the contact would not call me back. In several cases, months after the show ended, out of the blue I was called by the contact that I had given up on.
There also is a politeness factor that is a characteristic of the Mexican culture. I often receive so much positive feedback about my organization or products that I am convinced this is the most productive trade show yet. It is not unusual for an American to hear positive comments that can be misinterpreted as a concrete interest in the product or service being marketed. Getting to know another person socially and professionally is a trait of the Mexican culture, not only for its cultural attributes, but for practical business purposes. Because nobody wants to litigate using Mexico’s archaic legal system, Mexican businesspeople really need to get to know and trust the person with whom they are dealing.
Finally, always pack a good supply of note pads to capture notes on the companies and prospects that you are meeting. Take packing tape, string, a small hammer, and pliers to hang banners and make modifications to your booth. At Mexican trade shows, packing tape is used at the end of the day to seal the booth and to create a “forcefield” to prevent people from entering. Even though a few strands of tape cannot really prevent somebody from entering your booth after closing time, it does signal to curiosity seekers that entrance
.
